Thursday, November 10, 2016

Newsletter published on 13 October 2016(1) NYT calls for UNSC Resolution on
Palestine, in Lame Duck Season (between election & inauguration)(2)
New West Bank Settlement is Obama's Red Line(3) US Criticizes Israel over
West Bank Settlement Plan - NYT(4) Approval of New West Bank Settlement -
Statement from State Dept

If the aim of the Israeli government is to prevent a peace deal with
the Palestinians, now or in the future, it’s close to realizing that goal.
Last week, it approved the construction of a new Jewish settlement in
the West Bank, another step in the steady march under Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu to build on land needed to create a Palestinian
state.

The Obama administration, with every justification, strongly
condemned the action as a betrayal of the idea of a two-state solution in
the Middle East. But Mr. Netanyahu obviously doesn’t care what Washington
thinks, so it will be up to President Obama to find another way to
preserve that option before he leaves office.

The best idea under
discussion now would be to have the United Nations Security Council, in an
official resolution, lay down guidelines for a peace agreement covering such
issues as Israel’s security, the future of Jerusalem, the fate of
Palestinian refugees and borders for both states. The United Nations
previously laid down principles for a peace deal in Resolution 242 (1967)
and Resolution 338 (1973); a new one would be more specific and take into
account current realities. Another, though weaker, option is for Mr. Obama
to act unilaterally and articulate this framework for the two
parties.

The new settlement, which would consist of up to 300 homes, is
one of a string of housing developments that would nearly divide the West
Bank. It is designed to house settlers from a nearby illegal outpost, called
Amona, which an Israeli court has ordered demolished because it is built
on private, Palestinian-owned land.

In a statement, the State
Department denounced the new construction plan, saying it would create a
"significant new settlement" so deep into the West Bank that it would be
"far closer to Jordan than Israel." It said the project would "effectively
divide the West Bank and make the possibility of a viable Palestinian state
more remote" and contradicts earlier Israeli government assurances that it
would block more settlements.

A failure to freeze settlements has long
been at the center of tensions between successive American administrations
and Israel. This latest decision was especially insulting, coming just a few
weeks after the United States and Israel concluded a defense agreement
guaranteeing Israel $38 billion in military aid over 10 years. If the new
settlement was known earlier, it might have affected those negotiations.
Theoretically, the aid gives the United States leverage over Israel, but
various administrations have been loath to exercise it; the first
President George Bush withheld $400 million in loan guarantees from
Israel in 1990 over the settlement issue. The move was later assumed to
have been one factor in his re-election defeat.

However important
weapons and military assistance are, the best chance of improving Israel’s
security lies in reaching a comprehensive peace agreement with the
Palestinians. The ever expanding settlements have poisoned Palestinian hopes
and functioned variously as a spark, a target and an excuse for violence,
intensifying the conflict.

Mr. Netanyahu, however, feels no real pressure
to halt the construction. Certainly not from the Palestinians, who are
divided under a weak leader. Certainly not from Arab states like Saudi
Arabia, which have shown little real commitment to Palestinian statehood and
now are forging business and intelligence ties with Israel, a former enemy
that is now a thriving economic and technological hub.

The most
plausible pressure would come from Mr. Obama’s leading the Security Council
to put its authority behind a resolution to support a two-state solution and
offer the outlines of what that could be. That may seem like a bureaucratic
response unlikely to change anything, but it is the kind of political
pressure Mr. Netanyahu abhors and has been working assiduously to
prevent.

A version of this editorial appears in print on October 7, 2016,
on page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: At the Boiling Point
With Israel.

If Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu insists on defying the US president and building a new
West Bank settlement, Barack Obama could respond by abstaining in a UN
Security Council vote on Palestinian Statehood.

Author Akiva Eldar
Posted October 11, 2016

Translator Ruti Sinai

If it were up to
Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister would have asked the settlers to rein
in their passion for real estate at least until Barack Obama vacates his
seat for the next US president. Netanyahu can already take comfort in the
fact that despite the protests of the outgoing Obama administration, since
it took office in 2009 the number of Jewish West Bank settlers has grown
from some 300,000 to about 400,000. Nothing troubles the prime minister more
these days than the possibility that Obama will take advantage of the
transition period between Nov. 9 and Jan. 20 to leave him a poisoned
farewell gift. And nothing makes the Obama administration angrier than the
construction of a new settlement.

Unfortunately for Netanyahu, the
American calendar is not in sync with the Israeli one. Dec. 25 marks the
expiration of the two-year delay granted to carry out the court-ordered
demolition of the West Bank outpost of Amona. The chief justice at the time,
Asher Grunis, wrote in his ruling that the difficulties of the settlers
notwithstanding, illegal construction on private Palestinian land cannot be
allowed and does not justify non-enforcement of the law. The judge stressed
that not vacating Amona constitutes a violation of the state’s reiterated
commitment to carry out the demolition orders, in addition to being a
serious violation of the Palestinian inhabitants’ rights. A report by
the state comptroller several months prior to the ruling described
Israel’s planning in the West Bank as "every man did what was right in
his own eyes" (Judges 21:25).

On one hand, in a democratic state a
prime minister is supposed to respect court rulings. But on the other hand,
Netanyahu is dependent on his coalition partner, the nationalist-religious
party HaBayit HaYehudi — whose leader, Education Minister Naftali Bennett,
operates according to the rulings of a higher power that transcends that of
flesh-and-blood authorities. In July 2015, Bennett climbed onto the roof of
a house in the Beit-El settlement to protest the razing of a building
ordered by the Supreme Court. He demanded that Netanyahu inform the nation’s
top court that the demolition (of Jewish homes, of course) "does not fit the
spirit of the government."

In an attempt to have his cake and eat it,
Netanyahu decided to establish new residences for the Amona evacuees. On
Oct. 1, several hours after President Barack Obama delivered his stirring
eulogy of Shimon Peres at the Jerusalem graveside of Israel’s ninth
president, Channel 2 News reported that the top planning committee of
Israel’s civil administration in the West Bank had authorized a plan to
build 98 housing units in a new settlement to be built near the settlement
of Shvut Rahel. According to the plan, up to 300 housing units can be built
in the designated area. As a consolation prize, the Amona squatters have
also been promised permission to build an industrial zone in their new
settlement. In order to circumvent a pledge delivered in Netanyahu’s
2009 Bar-Ilan speech to Obama and to the entire world to refrain from
building new settlements in the West Bank until a permanent arrangement
is reached with the Palestinians, the new settlement has been defined by
the committee as a "neighborhood" of Shvut Rahel.

Israel (as well as
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] lobby in Washington)
claims that in 2004, on the eve of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip,
President George W. Bush OK'd Israeli construction in the "settlement blocs"
of Area C, the area of the West Bank under total Israeli control. As far as
Israel is concerned, it, of course, is the one that defines these "blocs."
Israel and AIPAC claim that this unwritten presidential authorization was an
annex to the written commitment (letters exchange) provided by Bush to late
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the effect that negotiations on a
permanent agreement with the Palestinians would factor in "new realities
on the ground" created since 1967, when Israel took over the West Bank.
But it was then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who said in 2009,
"With respect to the conditions regarding understandings between the
United States and the former Israeli government and the former
government of the United States, we have the negotiating record. … There
is no memorialization of any informal and oral agreements."

She went
on to say, "If they did occur, which, of course, people say they did, they
did not become part of the official position of the United States
government." She even pointed to the existence of documents suggesting that
oral agreements should not be viewed in any way as contradicting commitments
Israel had undertaken to the Road Map for Middle East peace. "These
commitments are very clear," she noted, referring to the Middle East
Quartet’s 2003 blueprint for Israeli-Palestinian peace. The document obliges
Israel to totally refrain from construction in the settlements, without
distinguishing between a "neighborhood," a "bloc" or "outside a bloc." That
same year, at the initiative of Bush, the UN Security Council unanimously
adopted the Road Map.

Israel is taking seriously the Oct. 5 White
House announcement that the new settlement constitutes a violation of the
Israeli government’s commitment to the United States. An Israeli violation
of commitments it gave regarding settlements would make it easier for the
United States to extricate itself from its commitment to oppose unilateral
moves against Israel. If Netanyahu insists on establishing the new
settlement, despite Obama’s anger, the president could well be encouraged to
abstain in the UN Security Council vote on the recognition of a Palestinian
state.

Paradoxically, the Amona settlers might turn out to be the ones to
pull the irons out of the fire for Netanyahu. Their refusal to move to the
site designated for their relocation makes the new settlement redundant.
An upgraded 2016 rerun of the 2006 evacuation of nine houses in the
settlement of Amona, a move that ended in a violent confrontation with
security forces, could push HaBayit HaYehudi into the opposition.
Netanyahu has already ascertained that the other parties in his ruling
coalition would gladly welcome opposition leader Isaac Herzog to their
ranks, thus cementing a coalition majority even if HaBayit HaYehudi
leaves.

After Netanyahu evacuates the settlement that has become a symbol
and replaces HaBayit HaYehudi with Herzog’s Zionist Camp, Obama will have no
choice but to praise him. And what about Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas? He will probably have to wait until Nov. 8 and hope that
Democratic candidate Clinton knows that the letter "C" does not
designate the third article of the Second Oslo Accord between Israel and
the Palestinians that her husband signed while in office, but is the
designation of the Palestinian territory that Israel is only supposed to
rule temporarily. The deadline for Israel to cede control of Area C came
and went when she was still the first lady.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on
Wednesday castigated the Israeli government for approving plans to create a
new Jewish settlement on the West Bank, three weeks after it signed a
lucrative military aid package with the United States and just as President
Obama was traveling to Jerusalem for the funeral of Shimon Peres.

In
an uncommonly harsh statement, the State Department "strongly condemned" the
move, asserting that it violated Israel’s pledge not to construct new
settlements and ran counter to the long-term security interests Israel was
seeking to protect with the military deal, which provides $38 billion in
assistance over the next decade.

The new settlement, one of a string of
housing complexes that threaten to bisect the West Bank, is designed to
house settlers from a nearby illegal outpost, Amona, which an Israeli court
has ordered demolished.

The timing of the approval especially infuriated
the White House, American officials said, because it came after Mr. Obama
met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations. Mr.
Netanyahu, they said, gave the president no advance warning, even though Mr.
Obama expressed deep concerns about Israel’s continuing settlement
construction. The officials declined to speak for attribution owing to
the sensitivity of the issue.

"It is disheartening that while Israel
and the world mourned the passing of President Shimon Peres, and leaders
from the U.S. and other nations prepared to honor one of the great champions
of peace, plans were advanced that would seriously undermine the prospects
for a two-state solution that he so passionately supported," the State
Department’s deputy spokesman, Mark Toner, said in the four-paragraph
statement.

The harsh words also rekindled speculation that Mr. Obama
might lay down guidelines for a proposed peace agreement between Israel and
the Palestinians before he leaves office, either in a speech or, less
likely, by backing a resolution at the United Nations Security
Council.

"The administration has been escalating its rhetoric in
opposition to West Bank settlement activity for more than a year," said
Martin S. Indyk, who served as Mr. Obama’s special envoy for
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. "The government of Israel doesn’t seem to
be listening."

"At a certain point," said Mr. Indyk, who is now the
executive vice president of the Brookings Institution, "the administration
may well decide that there needs to be consequences for what it now sees as
an effort to close off the two-state solution."

Mr. Obama, officials
said, has kept his own counsel about whether to thrust himself back into the
peace process. After two failed attempts to broker an agreement between the
Israelis and Palestinians, the president is leery of getting involved in
another hopeless effort, aides say. He would also likely consult with
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, were she to win to
make sure his move did not complicate her plans.

The plan for a new
settlement grows out of a bitter impasse between the Israeli authorities and
settlers in Amona, which sits on a hilltop near the Palestinian
administrative capital, Ramallah. Israel’s High Court of Justice has ordered
the residents of Amona, which is built on private, Palestinian-owned land,
to leave by Dec. 25.

The government’s plan is to move them to the newly
approved settlement, built on public land, which would initially have 98
houses and eventually could accommodate up to 300 houses. The settlers have
so far refused, creating an acute political crisis for Mr. Netanyahu’s
coalition government.

The Israeli authorities have dealt with other
such standoffs by seeking to retroactively legalize the settlements. But
because Amona is built on private Palestinian land, it cannot solve the
problem with legal machinations. Israeli authorities view the settlement as
a "satellite" of another settlement, Shvut Rachel, which itself was
retroactively legalized and lies within the redrawn boundaries of an
established settlement, Shilo.

"The 98 housing units approved in
Shilo do not constitute a ‘new settlement,’ " Israel’s ministry of foreign
affairs said in a statement issued on Wednesday. "Israel," the ministry
added, "remains committed to a solution of two states for two peoples, in
which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish state of
Israel."

For American officials, the problem is that Israel is
establishing a string of settlements, which the administration’s statement
said "effectively divide the West Bank and make the possibility of a viable
Palestinian state more remote." The latest settlement, the State
Department said, was "deep in the West Bank, far closer to Jordan than
to Israel."

No matter how strongly worded its condemnations, some
former diplomats said, it would do little to change Israel’s behavior. They
urged Mr. Obama to lay down his version of a road map to a peace
deal.

"Of course he should," said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former American
ambassador to Israel and Egypt. "These statements are meaningless if
there is no action. The U.S. should expect Israel not to do these
things, especially as ‘compensation’ for removal of an illegal
outpost."

Israel has a long history of ill-timed announcements on
settlements.

In 2010, four months after Mr. Netanyahu had agreed to a
moratorium on the construction of settlements in the West Bank, municipal
authorities in Jerusalem approved 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo, a
Jewish housing development in East Jerusalem that had been excluded from the
agreement. The announcement came as Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
was visiting Israel, and was viewed in Washington as a slap in the
face.

At Mr. Obama’s behest, Mrs. Clinton, then secretary of state,
delivered a 43-minute lecture to Mr. Netanyahu over the phone. Officials
said the episode angered the president more than Mr. Biden
himself.

Settlements have poisoned the relationship between Mr. Obama and
Mr. Netanyahu from the earliest days of the administration. Mr. Obama
demanded that Israel halt construction as a gesture to draw the
Palestinians back to the bargaining table. Mr. Netanyahu complained that
the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, frittered
away most of the 10-month moratorium before sitting down to talk.

The
timing of this approval, administration officials said, was particularly
galling: Israeli authorities approved the settlement on the day that Mr.
Peres, one of Israel’s founding fathers, died — and two days before Mr.
Obama arrived in Jerusalem. That raised the possibility that the news could
have leaked out while the president was at the funeral, which officials said
would have dwarfed the diplomatic uproar during Mr. Biden’s
visit.

For Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu, it is a bitter coda to a
relationship that seemed to end on an uncharacteristically gracious note in
New York, when the two men smiled for the cameras, and the prime minister
invited the president to Israel to play golf at a course next to his
house.

Privately, the president raised concerns with Mr. Netanyahu about
settlement construction and what Mr. Obama regards as its corrosive
effect on the peace process. On Wednesday, Josh Earnest, the White House
spokesman, said the administration felt misled yet again by the
Israelis.

"We did receive public assurances from the Israeli government
that contradict this announcement," Mr. Earnest said. "I guess when we’re
talking about how good friends treat one another, that’s a source of
serious concern as well."

Follow Mark Landler on Twitter at
@MarkLandler.

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from
Jerusalem.

A version of this article appears in print on October 6, 2016,
on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Condemns Israeli
Plan for New Settlement.

We strongly
condemn the Israeli government's recent decision to advance a plan that
would create a significant new settlement deep in the West
Bank.

Proceeding with this new settlement, which could include up to 300
units, would further damage the prospects for a two state solution. The
retroactive authorization of nearby illegal outposts, or redrawing of
local settlement boundaries, does not change the fact that this approval
contradicts previous public statements by the Government of Israel that
it had no intention of creating new settlements. And this settlement's
location deep in the West Bank, far closer to Jordan than Israel, would
link a string of outposts that effectively divide the West Bank and make
the possibility of a viable Palestinian state more remote.

It is
deeply troubling, in the wake of Israel and the U.S. concluding an
unprecedented agreement on military assistance designed to further
strengthen Israel's security, that Israel would take a decision so
contrary to its long term security interest in a peaceful resolution of
its conflict with the Palestinians. Furthermore, it is disheartening
that while Israel and the world mourned the passing of President Shimon
Peres, and leaders from the U.S. and other nations prepared to honor one
of the great champions of peace, plans were advanced that would
seriously undermine the prospects for the two state solution that he so
passionately supported.

Israelis must ultimately decide between
expanding settlements and preserving the possibility of a peaceful two state
solution. Since the recent Quartet report called on both sides to take
affirmative steps to reverse current trends and advance the two state
solution on the ground, we have unfortunately seen just the opposite.
Proceeding with this new settlement is another step towards cementing a
one-state reality of perpetual occupation that is fundamentally inconsistent
with Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state. Such moves will only
draw condemnation from the international community, distance Israel from
many of its partners, and further call into question Israel's commitment to
achieving a negotiated peace.

About Me

'Mission statement'.
I am convinced that jewish individuals and groups have an enormous influence on the world. The MSM are, for almost all people, the only source of information, and these are largely controlled by jewish people.
So there is a huge under-reporting on jewish influence in the world.
I see it as my mission to try to close this gap. To quote Henry Ford: "Corral the 50 wealthiest jews and there will be no wars." `(Thomas Friedman wrote the same in Haaretz, about the war against Iraq! See yellow marked area, blog 573)
If that is true, my mission must be very beneficial to humanity.